How do Neverborn deal with Zipp?

[Math Mathonwy]

Pandora just dies to Zipp.

Collodi gets thrown out of her bubble and damaged harshly by Zipp and then the rest of the Gremlins dismantle her as she's away from her safety net. Her Upgrade built to counter stuff like this doesn't work against Place.

Dreamer dies to Zipp even faster than Pandora.

Lynch, Lilith, and Zoraida are also very susceptible to Zipp's attacks.

Lucius is a tiny bit more durable but probably toast as well.

Titania? Does her new Upgrade work against Zipp? If it does, I suppose she has game.

But yeah - Zipp's extreme mobility and the ability to bypass nearly all defensive tech in the game makes him an ideal assassin against the low Wd count Neverborn Masters who have extremely limited access to healing.

How do you cope?

[Ludvig]

I shame my opponents so they stop playing Zipp!

No idea, following with interest. Aren't you a gremlin btw @Math Mathonwy ? Why on earth would you want to counter yourself? Haven't you heard that your faction is unplayable after the errata as well?

[Ludvig]

Couldn't Zoraida make the gremlins implode upon themselves by forcing them to hit each other with silly triggers?

[Pikciwok]

I Don't. As a faction, we have some really hard match ups and Zipp is one of them.

Maybe we should just make lemonade - take a full team of Changelings, copy him for That sweet sweet Ca 4 vs Ht and Murder his crew? He's insignificant - can't score that much points alone

[Ludvig]

Can masters take the extra soulstone reduction upgrade? Shaving off 2-3 pts of damage should help.

[Math Mathonwy]

30 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

I shame my opponents so they stop playing Zipp!

No idea, following with interest. Aren't you a gremlin btw @Math Mathonwy ? Why on earth would you want to counter yourself? Haven't you heard that your faction is unplayable after the errata as well?

I'm secretly a double agent - I want to hear all the futile plans for countering my Zipp and then devise counters against them!

Did I just type that out? Oops! I need to think of something to distract you!

Ooh, I got it! Here goes:

In all seriousness, I've been shamed to stop playing Zipp, so I'm kinda asking for a friend.

No, wait, that wasn't serious!

In all actual seriousness, I might be encountering Zipp while playing Neverborn myself.

 

[Azkral]

If he is playing The Dread Pirate Zipp, you cannot kill him directly, and have to deal with 3-4 bayou gremlins first. 

Aeslin can protect Collodi of being thrown away, but she is just going to die first.

I suppose the best way to deal with him is take the Emissary and throw him changelings until he dies, but is terribly costly in resources. I have played against him with Titania and Jacob and both Masters died turn 2-3

 

[INXVI]

My guess would probably be Lilith orientated. Rooting Zipp is a great shutdown, it doesn't solve all the problems, but it will limit options. Alongside her maneuverability, from flight and tangle shadows, with Beckon Malifaux maybe supressing his SH action, she could probably hide away, whilst continuing to Root models too. 

It's not a counter as such, but more of a way to supress how annoying he can be. 

Another option, could be the Hooded Rider with the Retributors eye, not only is the rider fast, but I believe it can ignore defensive and willpower triggers for a turn? I know he isn't as brutal in the earlier turns, but he could definitely keep up with Zipp and pick off Skeeters who are giving off fast, or other scheme runners in general.

[Fixxer]

I do see the issue here, but its like any other wave 4 Master.

Zipp is so mobile, it can be difficult to handle. The common consensus coming from the players that use these masters is that theyre very card and suit dependent. If you take away a few cards in their hand and make them  use SS early, they will struggle late game. Not sure how much this helps, but generally that is the case. 

Basically, if you know you are facing a wave 4 master, you will need a discard mechanic present. If these crews dont have their suits or SS left they will lack resources that put them over the top. We Malifaux players have a tendency to want to kill everything, sometimes resource drain is more important. For example, Zipp can get rid of conditions if he discards 2 cards, we may see that as him getting out of a paralized or a Rooted, but he is now down cards, which should make him more manageable. Plan A is never going to work anyway, as NB, improvisation is key and we certainly have the elements 

For NB, I think incorporating a decent amount of Shooting should help against this crew. Changelings, Angel eyes, Mctavish, trappers, doppelganger. With all the mimics, we should be able to be flexible in our damage output. Mctavish is best for that, as his ML and SH attacks are pretty solid. Ignoring terrain and engagements with his rifle is pretty solid against mobility. 

Not that its a hard counter, you'll need to play it correctly, but its a start. 

 

[Fixxer]

As for playing Dreamer into Zipp. Shooty Dreamer" would be best, he can summon Alps and Day dreams to turn into Chompy on T2 Early, or T1 if he gets his lucky SH off to wake. The alps and day dreams will slow down your opponent and help you out activate them or at least, catch up.

When Dreamer is not on the table and Chompy is... Zipp is garbage. Ht 4 on Chompy, sure, he can Zipp zap him, but we are more concerned with "Up we Go" right?  

Dont discount Dreamer too hard in this matchup, he has some play here. 

 

 

[Azkral]

2 hours ago, Fixxer said:

I do see the issue here, but its like any other wave 4 Master.

Zipp is so mobile, it can be difficult to handle. The common consensus coming from the players that use these masters is that theyre very card and suit dependent. If you take away a few cards in their hand and make them  use SS early, they will struggle late game. Not sure how much this helps, but generally that is the case. 

Basically, if you know you are facing a wave 4 master, you will need a discard mechanic present. If these crews dont have their suits or SS left they will lack resources that put them over the top. We Malifaux players have a tendency to want to kill everything, sometimes resource drain is more important. 

Very interesting. What discard mechanics do we have in neverborn? Stitched?

[Math Mathonwy]

I disagree that all Wave 4 Masters are somehow problematic. I think that even Nellie and Sandeep who are certainly at the very top of the power curve pose less problems than Zipp for the Neverborn. I mean, they might have an edge, most certainly, but they can't erase all Neverborn Masters off the table with the ease of Zipp.

As for the Dreamer idea - yeah, hiding inside Chompy is valid but the problem there is that Chompy is somewhat squishy and needs to get stuck in. And when he pops out the Dreamer, Dreamer is toast.

Removing cards from a hand is always very powerful. I disagree that it somehow affects Zipp or other Wave 4 Masters more than normal - I would argue that Summoners and Masters with powerful Actions with TNs like Obey and such are far more severely impacted.

It's worth noting that you will be usually faxing Gremlins as opposed to Zipp so it might be Wong or Somer you run into instead so tooling too hard against Zipp might backfire.

I've also found that shooting is pretty ineffective against Zipp as he can make great use of terrain and can use SS to counteract Focusing. He also has a good Def and quite a few wounds not to mention the general Gremlin access to healing. McTavish isn't bad but the Trapper+Changeling gunline is usually pretty easy for Zipp to avoid.

He is susceptible to indirect damage that bypasses his crazy Df/Wp Trigger so Black Blood bombing for example can work but it has a short range so is again difficult. And Neverborn kinda lack in other kinds of indirect damage unless I'm forgetting something big (which I certainly might be!).

[Fixxer]

Reva with Beyond Death and Decaying Aura, is a rather effective way of dealing with NB masters too. Maybe not quite as effective as a vs Ht but it can wreck as its a Ca vs Df or Wp. I dont think its a  bad thing that the wave 4 masters are solid at what they do. I was just saying, they all seem to come up in conversations about being really good picks except Parker, obviously. 

I mean, vs Zipp its a good idea to try and get LCB out and use his Wd as a buffer for Dreamer.  He is less vulnerable to Zipps shenanigans, not saying the player can get around it but its going to be more difficult and drain AP. I think Aether Connection and a full cache will be necessary along with spamming Alps and Daydreams to clutter the field with card drain. 

Daydreams and other WP debuffs that will be present offer good hand control as terrifying, smother, and manipulative duels will be more difficult. Or they can spend AP clearing them out which is always nice.  Daydreams can also push LCB around which can be clutch in protecting him or putting him in position to get the most out of his AP. Generally if i have a high  I would try to keep it for a Disembowel trigger to put further stress on resources. 

Removing the cards from the hand of a master like Zipp is extremely important. The key with a master that you know you cant kill is that you'll have to deal with them the entire game.  Most discard mechanics can target any model which will be rather difficult to defend and will leave Zipp without the cards needed to win a dual or drain him of his .  Honestly the only discard mechanics I can think of would be manipulative or terrifying duals as most players dont like to fail actions or be paralyzed. Smother and slow can be let go at times. Again, not a hard counter but just crap to make the Gremlin have to deal with. 

Gremlins mostly offer a similar issue to Dreamer with so I dont see tooling too hard against any of them backfiring. Dreamer is rather versatile, he just relies on a decent # of 7s in hand and his positioning. 

Sure, shooting isnt going to affect Zipp all that much but it forces his crew to be weary as to where they can be. If the game require interacting in a certain area, Zipp cant do that. So its imperative that the player position his shooters/gun line correctly. Really, with Mctavish its both because his Ml attack can be copied too with Ml6 Rg:3. Doppelganger is nice as she can copy 8" away. Changlings would be good blast targets, so you gotta take risks somewhere. Sure Zipp can use terrain and blast off again and heal, I mean, that's in a perfect world, or living the dream. Opponents still fear a RJ or BJ at the wrong time and pressure is pressure. Shooting isnt completely ineffective now.

All in all, I do think that Zipp is solid against NB masters in general I just dont think that Dreamer is as easy to kill as you made it sound in your original post because the NB "mostly" controls when LCB comes out and he can be more difficult for Zipp to deal with.    

 

 

 

[Tors]

Changelings kill Zipp quickly. No reduction = no stilts. Ca4 vs his ht and you can place him (in Emissary Terrain for example). 

[HydroMog]

i know that i will most likely have this post ignored, but has anyone tried the crossroad 7 against zipp? having so many auras overlap that do some sort of conditions/dmg/discard could be handy. plus they do pretty well at covering each others weaknesses to a certain degree.

the one time i played against zipp, i was playing these guys and zipp wasnt too bad to deal with but this was way back when zipp was first released.

[-Loki-]

Could be amusing using Liliths Transfixing Gaze to lure him into his own smoke Pillars, doing damage and giving him Slow.

[Math Mathonwy]

The key difference between Reva and Zipp is that Reva doesn't mess up your positioning actively. She might do it passively by dropping Corpses into certain parts that you then want to avoid but she doesn't force you similar to Zipp. Also, e.g., Pandora's defense trick works against Reva.

Also, I'm not sure that emptying Zipp's hand is any more important than emptyingWong's hand or emptying Rasputina's or Colette's or Marcus's or Ramos's hands. Making the other player discard cards is very powerful almost no matter the Master.

As for Dreamer - maybe it's just skill or playstyle but I've never experienced or seen Zipp have trouble killing Dreamer. The sample size isn't huge, though, so I might very well be wrong.

[Angelshard]

Some suggestions. 

Colloddi can have a beckoner as personal puppet and next to colloddi. After he's damaged by zipp she can take 1 dam to lure him back.

Hire Anna Lovelace. She prevents his move trigger from ending near your master. 

Kill Earl! I cannot overstate this. Kill him by any means possible. He is the key to neutering zipp. 

Use a hard hitting enforcer with ret eye to prevent his trigger. Then kill him.

Aeslin stops his place trick dead.

[Ludvig]

Lucius can bring discards and LoS ignoring attacks as well as do some good proximity damage by forcing a BBS to bomb the shit out of a tot that ran up to Zipp. Not sure he is a power pick though. 

[Ludvig]

Not sure how many focused austringer shots Zipp will dare risk exposing himself to and if he hides as a gremlin I csn probably pick those off.

[Haagrum]

If he takes (and uses) The Dread Pirate Zipp, you could consider using Aionus. It's a corner-case option, but being able to attack Zipp while he's buried is handy. Aionus can also move enemy markers with his [0] actions, which can help to mitigate Zipp's abilities somewhat. Aionus also gets benefits against Slow or Fast models - he can hand out the former, and Zipp can get the latter reasonably easily, but paints a larger target on himself if he does.

If he takes The Dread Pirate Zipp, I'd also recommend murdering his Bayou Gremlins with extreme prejudice. My recollection of the bury mechanic on that card is that he can't unbury if he has no Bayou Gremlin to replace. Plus, it sucks to be on the receiving end of Incite.

Of course, there's always Retribution's Eye to turn off enemy triggers, and A Thousand Faces to enable two Enforcers to use it on the little toerag...

[Haagrum]

20 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

Not sure how many focused austringer shots Zipp will dare risk exposing himself to and if he hides as a gremlin I csn probably pick those off.

Zipp with Bayou Gremlin backup is just begging for the Austringer treatment from Lucius. Kill Zipp's respawn points or simply burn through his hand by using the Mask trigger on the Austringers' attacks while out of LOS - either option might help keep him in check.

Lucius can avoid the worst of Zipp's shenanigans with Highest Authority, which forces him to burn Soulstones or Focus for a straight flip, or just try to play around the negative flip. Secret Service works against the Zapper, too.

[Ludvig]

It also helps that Lucius can stay 14" behind his austringers and still affect the table pretty well. Might be tempted to bring a 3ss guild guard to use as a battery and have the extra soulstone reduction. Even Zipp should have to expose himself to deal with that. The austringers naturally try to stay behind thick pieces of terrain so Zipp can't place them in a too exposed spot.

[Math Mathonwy]

2 hours ago, Angelshard said:

Some suggestions. 

Colloddi can have a beckoner as personal puppet and next to colloddi. After he's damaged by zipp she can take 1 dam to lure him back.

Hah! That's brilliant  

2 hours ago, Angelshard said:

Hire Anna Lovelace. She prevents his move trigger from ending near your master. 

Kill Earl! I cannot overstate this. Kill him by any means possible. He is the key to neutering zipp.

Yeah, this is key, I agree.

2 hours ago, Angelshard said:

Use a hard hitting enforcer with ret eye to prevent his trigger. Then kill him.

Any favourites?

2 hours ago, Angelshard said:

Aeslin stops his place trick dead.

Aeslin might get crushed by pianos, though.

[-Loki-]

I had luck with a Mature Nephilim and Retribution’s Eye recently. Especially if you can lure Zipp into his engagement range and he can Flurry for 3 attacks.